As much as we might hope otherwise, we here in the Interior will not, at least anytime soon, be growing all of our food. I report this finding following a truly excellent presentation given last month by soon-to-be-Dr. Alison Meadow, of the UAF Anthropology Department. Alison has put together some truly cutting edge research on the Fairbanks North Star Borough food system, part of which estimates that it would take just under 30,000 acres of new crop land to meet the caloric requirements of our population on a diet of just potatoes, closer to 80,000 acres to provide a more realistic, nutritionally-sound, and far less boring menu. There is indeed sufficient arable land available, but the complete social, economic, and ecological transformations that would be necessary to realize such a thing are almost too radical to imagine. Whatever the future of our food system will look like, Alison reminds us, it will only come about through frank and open discussion and debate. After all, these radical dreams that many of us have for the future of food are as steeped in world view and ideas about morality as are the notions of food preference and entitlement that drive so many others to eat foods that are not sustainable, and nourish neither their bodies nor their souls. (more…)